Your Salty Blood

Depression seeps in like a flood, like thick molasses penetrating the skull. Or maybe there's a hole, big enough for all the hate and sadness in the world to rain in but too small to be seen.

Or maybe it doesn't affect your brain.

Maybe when you walk near homeless people all their sadness and day-to-day fight for survival wrap around your legs, covering them like broken fishnets.

It might be that every time you brush a gravestone, purposely or accidentally, all the grieving that happened there paints your fingernails black.

Maybe it's the silence that that makes your ears bleed, the lack of music that makes you cry.

Maybe it all comes from inside.

Maybe all the hate in your veins turns your blood the color of teardrops, stinging you with a salty rush every time your heart pumps.

Maybe the jealousy turns your stomach around and around until it's an unrecognizable dark color.

But would that be enough? The molasses your mind marinates in, the broken fishnets, the black fingers and your salty blood; would those all be enough to hurt yourself?

Kill yourself?

That's exactly what your mind, even so clogged with thick darkness, doesn't want you to do.

The brain has one function, and that function is to survive.

Can it stop you when you're on the railing of that bridge, being blown back and forth and wondering how cold the water is? Does it shut off before you hit whatever body of water it is or do you stay alive, feeling everything until you can't anymore?

Can your brain stop it when you're sitting on a broken toilet, crossing your eyes to stare at the gun in your mouth? When you hesitate, do you notice how bad the metal tastes and how heavy it is in just one hand? Does your brain override you and jerk a hand, trying to knock the gun out? But if it's too late, if you've already pulled the trigger, in the few seconds before you die does it laugh at its failure? Does it say 'nicely played' to you before you're incapable of thought?

Does it just surrender to you?

Do people try to kill themselves believing that their brain will save them from their mind? Do they believe the silence will end when they do, that sweet music will await them when they die?

But the silence just goes on and on and on and your brain never saves you from yourself.

Reviews

[Nathan Bernard]

I have mixed feelings about this. There are really wonderful parts, some parts I don't care for much, and I feel its tied together in a hurry at the readers loss. I will start with what I really enjoyed. A hole big enough to rain in but too small to be seen (I feel their are more meaningful words than hate and sadness though) your blood the color of teardrops (beautiful). believing their brain will save them from their mind (An excellent diction choice to separate logic from feeling without saying those words) I also enjoyed the overall point, but I am not sure its always this way. I have thought that those that feel they want to kill themselves just want their circumstances to change. Whereas those that have lost all feeling use logic to decide there is no point anymore and they go through with it.

About the structure it is labeled a story but I felt it was more of a poem. It is intriguing but in a slightly confusing way as opposed to inviting way. This might throw some people off. I think overall you have some really wonderful language and a great idea and with a little more time spent on structure it could be a real gem.